#How to make music like deadmau5 full#

(Image: Drew Ressler/)ДЄt a rave I attended in the mid-вЂ™90s, we purchased water and glow sticks from an вЂњE-martвЂќ kiosk, the sign for which could surely have been used by Kmart to make a case for copyright infringement. Zimmerman with Paris Hilton and his girlfriend, Lindsey Gayle Evans. Later, it dawned on me: it must be nerve-racking to be face to face with a stranger when youвЂ™re so accustomed to meeting the public in a mask.

#How to make music like deadmau5 full#

ZimmermanвЂ™s self-consciousness was strangely sweet-I didnвЂ™t expect anxiety from a guy who performs to full stadiums. When I first met Zimmerman, a week before the Chicago show, he had a Band-Aid on his cheek, the result of a shaving experiment with a straight razor, and was embarrassed by the tiny wound. He is often surrounded by a posse that includes childhood friends, managers, his mother, his brother and his girlfriend, Lindsey Gayle Evans, a one-time Playboy playmate. He wears ball caps and T-shirts and turned 30 earlier this year.

HeвЂ™s pale and skinny, with a collection of tattoos across his neck and arms. Mau5head off, Zimmerman resembles many of his fans. His fall tour will take him to stadiums across North America and culminate in a 14,000-person rave at the Rogers Centre this month. (The cat has his own Facebook page and 73,000 fans.) The Lollapalooza gig was one of the biggest shows he performed in a year of big shows. Even his cat, a black and white shelter rescue he named Professor Meowingtons, has become a starring character in ZimmermanвЂ™s online universe. He has more than four million Facebook fans, though given the speed at which his following has grown, that number could double by the time this story hits the newsstands. His fame has grown exponentially in the six years since he released his first recording. But cults are usually small Deadmau5вЂ™s followers are legion. The devotion of his fans is cult-like: they follow him from show to show, tattoo his logo on their arms and calves, and post thousands of gushing comments about him and his music online. The audience screams and swoons as if for a rock god. HeвЂ™s surrounded by towers of strobe lights and projectors, all flashing in sync with the thump of his music. He doesnвЂ™t sing (he hires guest vocalists for some tracks), but operates a bank of computers and occasionally waves at the audience. He stands high above the audience in a specially designed, spacecraft-like cube. The helmet looks goofy, but itвЂ™s important: it was key in ZimmermanвЂ™s transformation from a dance music outsider into a mainstream icon.Д«efore Zimmerman started appearing in his mask, his style of fast-paced rave music was typically played in a warehouse accessed via a dark alley. When he performs, Zimmerman wears his own electronically enhanced mouse mask, what fans call a Mau5head.

Deadmau5 (pronounced вЂњdead mouseвЂќ) is the nom de guerre of the Toronto electronic music artist Joel Zimmerman. They were worn as a tribute to the musician Deadmau5, who was the headlining act that night. The helmetsвЂ™ eyes were blank and bulging, their crescent mouths leering grins. Some of the dancers wore cartoonish, oversized mouse helmets that bobbed side to side and back and forth. The show should have been a flop instead, it became a frenzied dance party, like Woodstock on methamphetamines. The rain and the force of thousands of feet had turned the park into a swampy field of splattering mud. (Image: Matt Barnes)ДЄ steady August downpour drenched ChicagoвЂ™s Grant Park on the final night of the Lollapalooza music festival. Mouse pad: Joel ZimmermanвЂ™s downtown condo has jГ¤germeister on tap.